John James Newsletter No. <64>

Global Apollo programme seeks to make clean energy cheaper than coal
Sir David King calls for £15bn a year R&D spending on clean energy to make it cheaper than coal, in emulation of the space race. Making electricity 100% renewable by 2050 would require affordable energy storage, both on the domestic and national scale, with better batteries, heat storage in water, soil or molten salt, compressed air, flywheels and hydrogen. Sir David Attenborough said: “The exciting thing about the Apollo report is that it is positive – at last someone is saying we can do things.”
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jun/02/apollo-programme-for-clean-energy-needed-to-tackle-climate-change

Snowden: balance of power has shifted as we “turn away from reaction and fear towards resilience and reason”
Bulk data collection programmes had been declared illegal and disavowed by the US Congress. “After the White House found that this program had not stopped a single terrorist attack, even the president who once defended its propriety has now ordered it terminated.”
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/05/snowden-balance-power-shifted-people-defy-government-surveillance-nsa?CMP=ema_565

From Multi-Year Drought To Flash Flooding: ‘Weather Whiplash’ Explained
Extreme weather is becoming longer and stronger because of changes in our atmosphere that cause weather patterns to get “stuck.”
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/06/02/3664087/weather-whiplash/
and a deeper analysis of where it is heading in “The coming Age of Storms”
https://robertscribbler.wordpress.com/

Is it any wonder that the Arctic is melting so fast?
Watch the beguiling movement of C02 – click here and go to the second picture
http://www.designntrend.com/articles/26311/20141119/swirls-of-carbon-dioxide-dictate-severity-of-greenhouse-gas-emissions.htm

Britain’s Student Union Votes to Boycott Israel over violations of Palestinian human rights.
The motion explicitly aligns the union with the Palestinian-instigated Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions [BDS] campaign. The NUC is the UK’s umbrella student organisation for some 600 higher education institutions representing seven million students.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/britains-student-union-votes-to-boycott-israel/
Australasia’s largest specialist college to divest £1.2m from fossil fuels
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/keep-it-in-the-ground-blog/2015/jun/05/australasias-largest-specialist-college-to-divest-12m-from-fossil-fuels?CMP=EMCENVEML1631

Fossil fuels warm the planet for an instant, but the C02 continues to warm the planet for decades
The warming induced by CO2 over its lifetime in the atmosphere would exceed the warming from direct combustion by 100,000.
http://www.reportingclimatescience.com/news-stories/article/study-claims-greenhouse-gas-warming-felt-in-months.html
C02 half-life possibly less than 30 years. See fascinating discussion in

Hollywood still grapples with nuclear fallout
The US turned swathes of desert radioactive during the cold war and denied it. The mystery still haunts Hollywood and rural Mormon communities. By the time John Wayne succumbed to stomach cancer in 1979, of 220 cast and crew, 91 had contracted cancer,
http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/jun/06/downwinders-nuclear-fallout-hollywood-john-wayne?CMP=ema_565

US Officials Consider Nuclear Strikes against Russia
“The options go so far as one implied—but not stated explicitly—that would improve the ability of US nuclear weapons to destroy military targets on Russian territory.” In other words, the US is actively preparing nuclear war against Russia.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/us-officials-consider-nuclear-strikes-against-russia/5453655Sleepwalking to Another Mideast Disaster
Denied crucial information about Syria, the American people are being led toward the precipice of another Middle East war, guided by neocons and liberal hawks who are set on “regime change” even if that means a likely victory for Sunni terrorists,

8.2 Million Iraqis In Need of Emergency Humanitarian Assistance
All segments of Iraqi society – Yezidi, Christian, Shabak, Turkmen, Shia, Sunni and Kurd – have been affected by the violence.
http://worldpress.org/link.cfm?http://www.ipsnews.net/2015/06/8-2-million-iraqis-in-need-of-emergency-humanitarian-assistance/

Varoufakis: Greece’s creditors have turned negotiations into a war
It is not true that they made concessions and we made concessions and that there is a deadlock. They made no concessions. When we met the first time in February they came up with pretty much what they have now offered. Then we had months of negotiations in the so-called Brussels group.
http://www.euractiv.com/sections/euro-finance/varoufakis-greeces-creditors-have-turned-negotiations-war-315247
Greece is playing to lose the debt crisis poker game
Greece has shown its best cards too early and may have missed opportunity to end destructive austerity imposed by Germany
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/feb/09/greece-is-playing-to-lose-the-debt-crisis-poker-game

The Vatican talks Climate Change: The Pontifical Academy of Sciences
Climate change from unsustainable consumption by 15% of the population has become the dominant moral issue for society.
http://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/2068632/climate-change-and-the-common-good.pdf
and
http://www.climatecodered.org/2015/06/winning-carbon-war-vatican-talks.html

Obama Sidelines Kerry On Ukraine Policy
Kerry was reaffirming the position of Merkel and Hollande, the key shapers of the Minsk II agreement; and Nuland was nullifying them. Obama now has sided with Nuland on this; it’s a slap in the face to the EU: Poroshenko can continue ignoring Kerry and can blatantly ignore the Minsk II agreement; and Obama tacitly sides with Poroshenko and Nuland, against Kerry
http://www.countercurrents.org/zuesse070615.htm

Sea-level rises has accelerated to 4.4mm a year from earlier average of 3.2mm.
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/weather/sea-levels-in-retreat-a-sure-sign-el-nios-grip-is-tightening-20150603-ghdwix

WikiLeaks releases 17 secret TISA documents
This agreement would hamstring governments and citizens by focussing on services. Like both TTIP and TPP, one of the central aims of TISA is to remove “barriers” to trade in services. It ensures that services are deregulated and opened up to private companies around the world, and that once privatised, they cannot be re-nationalised.
http://arstechnica.co.uk/tech-policy/2015/06/wikileaks-releases-secret-tisa-docs-the-more-evil-sibling-of-ttip-and-tpp/
and
http://www.commondreams.org/news/2015/06/03/wikileaks-strikes-again-leaked-tisa-docs-expose-corporate-plan-reshaping-global

Some Israeli Leaders Do Tell The Truth
Still today, 48 years on, few know the truth about how Israel set the stage for war in June 1967 to grab more Arab land. The single most decisive event that made war inevitable happened on Thursday 1 June, four days before Israel launched its attacks. What was it?
http://www.countercurrents.org/hart030615.htm

On the e-waste trail
An investigation into the toxic trail of illegal e-waste that is ushered from the first to the third world. At the beginning of 2011, the number of containers had gone up to 500 a month. Now, the average is up to 600 a month, with a noticeable increase in the months just after Christmas when many consumers are discarding gadgets after having found new ones under the Christmas tree.
http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/witness/2014/09/e-waste-trail-2014924132443417118.html

Compare Australia and China with the US prison populations
China takes 7th place in the world in incarceration rate. Which of course makes you wonder, what the hell is going on in America? Are we just a society of misfits, rabble-rousers, and outright criminals? Or, is it something else?
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article42064.htm